Notes from Howard's Sabbatical from Working. The name comes from a 1998 lunch conversation. Someone asked if everything man knew was on the web. I answered "no" and off the top of my head said "Fidel Castro's favorite color". About every 6-12 months I've searched for this. It doesn't show up in the first 50 Google results (this blog is finally first for that search), AskJeeves says it's: red.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Remember, The Deficit is Bush's Fault

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out Critics Still Wrong on What’s Driving Deficits in Coming Years. "Some critics continue to assert that President George W. Bush’s policies bear little responsibility for the deficits the nation faces over the coming decade — that, instead, the new policies of President Barack Obama and the 111th Congress are to blame. Most recently, a Heritage Foundation paper downplayed the role of Bush-era policies (for more on that paper, see p. 4). Nevertheless, the fact remains: Together with the economic downturn, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years (see Figure 1)."

7 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Democratic Congressfolk and Democratic Senators need to display this chart to the floor of the house or senate for every debate going forward until it is seared into the mind of every person in this country.

The DNC should buy add space on billboards and buses. But make it simpler. Make just two parts to the chart. One part devoted to the portion of the deficit corresponding specifically to GW Bush policies like the wars, tax cuts for the wealthy, economic downturn, and the other part (which would be miniscule by comparison) associated with Obama and the democrats for everything else (including TARP and Fannie and Freddie even though those were equally "caused" by Dems and Repubs).

Think of it as the Democrat pictograph equivalent of a Frank Lutz talking point. After enough exposure, people may actually begin to understand the reality of what it means, and who and what is actually responsible for the current and future massive deficits.

It's not on Congress' floor, it's on TV and Obama should do a televised speech. He should include the two graphs I point to on unemployment. All Dems need to repeat the same thing. They need to go on O'Reilly and say it.

I was going to mention that the DNC should buy ad space for the graph on buses, subways and billboards to spread the message. Saturate the electorate with the image until it is as recognizable as the Golden Arches.

What they should really do is run the graph back to 2000, when the deficit was....., well there was no deficit, there was an actual surplus under Bill Clinton.

This way one can really see the effect of the GW Bush presidency on taking the country from a budget surplus to the largest deficits in history.

"This extends to the fanatic attention to detail that Apple brings to its biggest product launches. These usually commence after months, possibly years, of rumors (we'd been hearing about an Apple tablet since 2002). The actual launch day is choreographed like a dictator's display of military splendor. One example: Apple buys up all the bus-stop ad space near the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the San Francisco venue where it has held its recent events. It then switches its posters while Jobs is speaking. So this past January 27, when I walked into Apple's iPad debut, the street ads depicted something old; when I left, there's the iPad everywhere you look. Study the iPad in the poster and its clock says 9:41 a.m. Why? Apple thought of that, too. That's the exact moment that Jobs revealed the iPad to the world. Somewhere, Kim Jong-il is smiling. Who else but Apple orchestrates its branding to this nth degree?"